10 Torabi A.R., Ayatollahi M.R., Colussi M.

/ Ôèçè÷åñêàÿ ìåçîìåõàíèêà 21 1 (2018) 10–15

ÓÄÊ 539.42

Compressive brittle fracture prediction in blunt V-notched PMMA

specimens by means of the strain energy density approach
A.R. Torabi1, M.R. Ayatollahi2, M. Colussi3
Fracture Research Laboratory, Faculty of New Sciences and Technologies,
1

University of Tehran, Tehran, 14395-1561, Iran

2
Fatigue and Fracture Research Laboratory, Center of Excellence in Experimental Solid Mechanics and Dynamics,
School of Mechanical Engineering, Iran University of Science and Technology, Tehran, 16846-13114, Iran
3
Department of Management and Engineering, University of Padova, Vicenza, 36100, Italy

The paper aims to examine the suitability of the strain energy density criterion in predicting the fracture behavior of blunt V-notched
specimens under compression load. Recent studies on local stress fields have shown that the strain energy density, averaged over a specific
control volume which embraces the notch round border, could be a robust parameter in the brittle fracture assessment of several materials.
A set of experimental results recently published in the literature on compressive brittle fracture of V-notched specimens made out of
polymethyl methacrylate has here been considered. Finite element analyses have been performed on plane strain condition and experimental
data have been summarized by means of the SED criterion. It has been shown that the proposed criterion permits a satisfactory evaluation
of the fracture load of polymethyl methacrylate specimens weakened by notches having different opening angles and radii.
Keywords: brittle fracture, compression, V-notch, strain energy density, polymethyl methacrylate
DOI 10.24411/1683-805X-2018-11002

Îöåíêà õðóïêîãî ðàçðóøåíèÿ îáðàçöîâ ÏÌÌÀ ñ òóïûì V-îáðàçíûì íàäðåçîì

ïðè ñæàòèè íà îñíîâå êðèòåðèÿ ïëîòíîñòè ýíåðãèè äåôîðìàöèè
A.R. Torabi1, M.R. Ayatollahi2, M. Colussi3
1
Òåãåðàíñêèé óíèâåðñèòåò, Òåãåðàí, 14395-1561, Èðàí
2
Èðàíñêèé óíèâåðñèòåò íàóêè è òåõíîëîãèè, Òåãåðàí, 16846-13114, Èðàí
3
Ïàäóàíñêèé óíèâåðñèòåò, Âè÷åíöà, 36100, Èòàëèÿ
 ñòàòüå ðàññìîòðåíî ïðèìåíåíèå êðèòåðèÿ ïëîòíîñòè ýíåðãèè äåôîðìàöèè äëÿ îöåíêè õàðàêòåðà ðàçðóøåíèÿ îáðàçöîâ ñ
òóïûì V-îáðàçíûì íàäðåçîì â óñëîâèÿõ ñæèìàþùåé íàãðóçêè. Ñîãëàñíî íåäàâíèì èññëåäîâàíèÿì ëîêàëüíûõ ïîëåé íàïðÿæåíèé,
ïëîòíîñòü ýíåðãèè äåôîðìàöèè, óñðåäíåííàÿ ïî îáúåìó ìàòåðèàëà âîêðóã çàêðóãëåííîãî êîíöà íàäðåçà, ìîæåò ñëóæèòü íàäåæíûì
ïàðàìåòðîì äëÿ îöåíêè õðóïêîãî ðàçðóøåíèÿ ðÿäà ìàòåðèàëîâ. Â íàñòîÿùåé ðàáîòå îáñóæäàþòñÿ îïóáëèêîâàííûå ðåçóëüòàòû
ýêñïåðèìåíòîâ ïî õðóïêîìó ðàçðóøåíèþ îáðàçöîâ ïîëèìåòèëìåòàêðèëàòà ñ V-îáðàçíûì íàäðåçîì ïðè ñæàòèè. Ïðèâåäåíû
ðåçóëüòàòû ìîäåëèðîâàíèÿ ìåòîäîì êîíå÷íûõ ýëåìåíòîâ çàäà÷è äëÿ ñëó÷àÿ ïëîñêîé äåôîðìàöèè. Ýêñïåðèìåíòàëüíûå äàííûå
îáîáùåíû ñ ïîìîùüþ êðèòåðèÿ ïëîòíîñòè ýíåðãèè äåôîðìàöèè. Ïîêàçàíî, ÷òî äàííûé êðèòåðèé ïîçâîëÿåò óäîâëåòâîðèòåëüíî
îöåíèòü ðàçðóøàþùóþ íàãðóçêó äëÿ îáðàçöîâ ïîëèìåòèëìåòàêðèëàòà ñ íàäðåçàìè, èìåþùèìè ðàçíûå óãëû ðàñêðûòèÿ è ðàäèóñû.
Êëþ÷åâûå ñëîâà: õðóïêîå ðàçðóøåíèå, ñæàòèå, V-îáðàçíûé íàäðåç, ïëîòíîñòü ýíåðãèè äåôîðìàöèè, ïîëèìåòèëìåòàêðèëàò

1. Introduction sure phenomenon takes place in cracked members under

The two main groups of stress concentrators in compo-
nents and structures are cracks and notches. A literature
survey indicates that brittle fracture investigations in com-
ponents containing stress raisers under compression are lim-
ited to notched members. This is probably because the clo-
compression and, the faces coming in contact with each
other, little chance of crack propagation is allowed. Con-
versely, in a notched member, particularly in V- and U-
shaped notches, the faces may or may not come in contact
with each other, depending on the gap value and the maxi-

© Torabi A.R., Ayatollahi M.R., Colussi M., 2018

 Torabi A.R., Ayatollahi M.R., Colussi M. / Ôèçè÷åñêàÿ ìåçîìåõàíèêà 21 1 (2018) 10–15
mum face displacement at the onset of failure, and the com-
pressive damage may nucleate and lead to the final frac-
ture.
Studies on notched components under tensile and shear
loading conditions have been widely performed during the
past two decades, see a comprehensive list of references in
Refs. [1, 2]. However, it is of crusial importance to de-
velop appropriate failure criteria for structures containing
various shaped notches, such as V-, U- and O-notches, un-
der compressive loading conditions to bridge the current
gap on the topic and prevent the onset of sudden fracture.
The first use of the notch fracture mechanics principles
in compressive brittle fracture prediction of notched com-
ponents has probably been made in [3]. They have recently
investigated the fracture behavior of graphite specimens
weakened by double V-notches with end holes (VO-notches)
both experimentally and theoretically by means of the av-
erage strain energy density (SED) criterion. Torabi and
Ayatollahi [4] have successfully predicted the test results
reported in [3] by means of the two brittle fracture criteria,
known as the point-stress (PS) criterion and mean-stress
(MS) criterion. The most recent works on compressive
brittle fracture of notched members are those published by
Ayatollahi et al. and Torabi et al. [5, 6] in which the PS and
MS fracture criteria have been successfully employed for
predicting the fracture loads of two new V-notched test
specimens, called the V-notch stepped cottage (VSC) and
the flattened V-notched semidisk (FVSD) specimens, made
of polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA), for various notch angles
and different notch radii.
Since the extension of the brittle fracture criteria under
tension and shear loading conditions to compressive load-
ing conditions has taken place in the most recent years,
their validity should strongly be verified by means of vari-
ous experimental results on different brittle materials and
test specimens. The attempt made here is to examine the
suitability of the average strain energy density (SED) crite-
rion in predicting the fracture load of PMMA specimens.
The criterion states that brittle fracture occurs when the
strain energy density, averaged in a specific control vol-
ume, which includes a crack or notch tip, reaches a critical
value dependent on the material. Good agreement has been
found between numerical predictions and the experimental
results, demonstrating that the proposed criterion works well
not only on compressive brittle fracture of VO-notched
graphite specimens, but also on that of blunt V-notched
PMMA specimens.
2. Experimental results from the literature
A set of new experimental results have been recently
published by Ayatollahi et al. [5] dealing with brittle frac-
ture in blunt V-notches under compression. The details about
specimens and test procedures have been reported in the
following subsections.
11
Table 1
Some of the mechanical properties of PMMA
at room temperature
Material property Value
Elastic modulus in compression, MPa 2018
Poisson’s ratio 0.38
Ultimate tensile strength, MPa 70.5
Plane-strain fracture toughness, MPa m0.5 1.96
Compressive yield strength, MPa 96
Ultimate compressive strength, MPa 98
2.1. Material
Polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) has been used for
conducting fracture experiments at room temperature on
blunt V-shaped notches under compression. The essential
mechanical properties of the adopted PMMA at room tem-
perature have been taken from the experiments performed
earlier by Ayatollahi et al. [5], according to the standard
ASTM D695-10, and are shown in Table 1. In Fig. 1 the
true stress-strain curve of the PMMA sample tested under
compression is depicted.
2.2. Specimen
The adopted specimen, named V-notch stepped cottage
(VSC) specimen, is schematically shown in Fig. 2. It has
firstly been proposed and utilized in Ref. [5] for conduct-
ing compressive fracture experiments on blunt V-notches.
In Fig. 2, the parameters 2α, ρ, a, b, c, d, e, L, t and P are
respectively the notch opening angle, notch radius, notch
length, flattened length, step height, step width, specimen
height, specimen length, specimen thickness and the com-
pressive load.
Due to the bending effects, tensile stresses are unavoid-
ably generated at some points far enough from the notch
tip. By making a step on the top and bottom of the speci-
men and applying the compressive load to the remaining
Fig. 1. A sample true stress-strain curve of the PMMA under com-
pression according to the results of [5]
12 Torabi A.R., Ayatollahi M.R., Colussi M. / Ôèçè÷åñêàÿ ìåçîìåõàíèêà 21 1 (2018) 10–15

men is then a consequence of the need to make sure to have

Fig. 2. A scheme of the tested VSC specimen as in Ref. [5]
edge, the notch surroundings experience pure compressive
deformations which could be significantly higher compared
to tensile ones. The particular shape of the proposed speci-
compressive fracture from the notch border before tensile
fracture from other locations of the specimen. Because the
compressive strength of brittle materials is usually two to
three times greater than the tensile one, it was necessary to
adopt VSC specimens having dimensions so that the level
of the compressive stresses at the notch tip was several times
greater than the maximum tensile stress in the whole speci-
men. The parameters above introduced have been chosen
as 2α = 30°, 60° and 90°; ρ = 0.5, 1.0 and 2.0 mm; a = 10
and 25 mm; b = 30 mm; c = 20 mm; d = 5 mm; e = 85 mm;
L = 110 mm and t = 6 mm. Note that these dimensions have
also been chosen in order to make sure that buckling would
not take place during the experiments. Tested specimens
have been fabricated by laser cutting from a PMMA plate of

Table 2
The experimental fracture loads and computed SED values of the VSC specimens
a = 10 mm a = 25 mm
2α ρ, mm Pf , kN W , MJ/m3 2α ρ, mm Pf , kN W , MJ/m3
–13.10 11.67 –8.36 18.79
0.5 –13.31 12.05 0.5 –7.53 15.24
–17.40 20.59 –8.62 19.98
–11.42 9.13 –6.29 10.97
30° 1.0 –10.79 8.15 30° 1.0 –7.12 14.05
–13.27 12.33 –5.74 9.13
–12.70 11.65 –8.96 22.59
2.0 –12.74 11.73 2.0 –8.86 22.09
–10.93 8.63 –6.91 13.44
–11.37 9.55 –7.21 14.76
0.5 –12.24 11.07 0.5 –7.72 16.92
–12.29 11.16 –7.60 16.40
–9.84 7.22 –5.99 10.27
60° 1.0 –9.59 6.86 60° 1.0 –6.12 10.72
–10.15 7.68 –6.67 12.73
–11.98 10.73 –7.28 15.00
2.0 –11.81 10.43 2.0 –6.58 12.25
–17.27 22.30 –6.18 10.81
–12.59 12.12 –8.16 18.42
0.5 –12.76 12.45 0.5 –8.34 19.24
–10.42 8.30 –8.47 19.85
–8.91 6.03 –4.95 6.72
90° 1.0 –9.70 7.15 90° 1.0 –5.37 7.91
–8.68 5.72 –5.28 7.65
–10.46 8.13 –5.92 9.34
2.0 –10.20 7.73 2.0 –6.56 11.47
–8.56 5.45 –6.63 11.71
 Torabi A.R., Ayatollahi M.R., Colussi M. / Ôèçè÷åñêàÿ ìåçîìåõàíèêà 21 1 (2018) 10–15
6 mm thick. The cut surfaces were accurately polished by
means of appropriate abrasive papers to remove possible
defects due to the cutting process. The strain rate in the
tests was set to 0.000075 1/s providing quasi-static mono-
tonic loading conditions. Three specimens have been tested
for each geometry in order to check the repeatability of the
test. Totally, 54 fracture experiments have been carried out.
2.3. Test results
Table 2 summarizes the experimentally recorded frac-
ture loads. It is possible to point out that all the fracture
loads are less than 18 kN and most of them are less than 13
kN. No evidence of buckling has been observed.
A sample measured load-displacement curve is shown
in Fig. 3. A linear trend has been found up to a load peak,
after which a sudden fall to zero occurs, confirming the
predominantly linear elastic behavior of the specimens up
to the final failure. For this reason, the experimental results
can potentially be predicted by means of brittle fracture
criteria based on linear elastic notch mechanics principles,
e.g. the averaged SED criterion.
In the forthcoming sections, the SED averaged over a
specified control volume which embraces the notch border
is presented and adopted to predict the measured fracture
loads summarized in Table 2.
3. Averaged strain energy density approach
The averaged strain energy density criterion (SED),
according to [7], states that brittle failure occurs when the
mean value of the strain energy density over a given con-
trol volume W , reaches the critical value Wc . In agree-
ment with [8], named Wc the ultimate compression strength
under elastic stress field conditions and E the Young’s modu-
lus of the material, the critical value of the total strain en-
ergy can be determined by the following:
1 2
Wc = σc . (1)
2E
This critical value varies from material to material but
it does not depend on the notch geometry and sharpness.
Fig. 3. A sample load-displacement curve of the VSC specimen
according to the results of [5]
13
Under plane strain condition and tension loading, the
following expression has been proposed by Lazzarin and
Zambardi [7] to evaluate the control volume dimension R0 :
(1 + ν )(5 − 8ν)  K Ic 
2
R0 =  , (2)
4π  σt 
where K Ic is the material fracture toughness, ν is the
Poisson’s ratio and σ t is the ultimate tensile strength of an
unnotched specimen. Under compressive load, Eq. (2) can-
not be used because there is no definition for fracture tough-
ness. An empirical approach can then be a good alternative
for determining R0 for notched components under com-
pression, as described in the following section.
4. Finite element model
Linear static finite element analyses were conducted in
order to numerically evaluate the averaged SED. Analyses
were performed in 2D plane strain condition, by means of
ANSYS® software and adopting quadratic finite elements.
The mesh insensitivity of the SED approach has already
been proved by Lazzarin et al. [9] and it is a consequence
of the finite element method, in which the elastic strain
energy is computed directly from the nodal displacements,
without involving stresses and strains. Figure 4, a shows
the schematic representation of the finite element model
and a sample of the coarse mesh adopted.
The external load was introduced as uniformly distrib-
uted along the top flat line of the specimen and the nodes
a
–250.334 –190.804 –131.274 –71.7438 –12.2138
–220.569 –161.039 –101.509 –41.9788 17.5513
Fig. 4. Finite element model and stress contour for the case of
2α = 30°, ρ = 0.5 mm and a = 25 mm. Schematic representation
of the finite element model (a), first principal stress contour
lines (b)
14 Torabi A.R., Ayatollahi M.R., Colussi M. / Ôèçè÷åñêàÿ ìåçîìåõàíèêà 21 1 (2018) 10–15
b
0.133936 0.538935 0.943933 1.34893 1.75393
0.336435 0.741434 1.14643 1.55143 1.95643
Fig. 5. Shape of the control volume under mode I loading and
SED contour lines for the case of 2α = 30°, ρ = 0.5 mm and a =
= 25 mm. Control volume for blunt V-notches (a), sample of SED
contour lines (b)
belonging to the same line were constrained so that they
could move only along the loading direction. The nodes
belonging to the corresponding bottom line of the speci-
men were completely fixed. A contour plot of the main prin-
cipal stress component σ1 is shown in Fig. 4, b for the case
2α = 30°, ρ = 0.5 mm and a = 25 mm. According to the
SED approach, for rounded V-notches the critical volume
is represented by a portion of circular sector. The shape of
the volume is shown in Fig. 5, a while the contour lines of
the SED are depicted in Fig. 5, b for the same case pre-
sented in Fig. 4.
On the notch side the control volume boundary is rep-
resented by the circular notch edge with radius ρ, on the
other side the boundary is a circle arc with radius R0 + r0 .
The center of the notch radius is geometrically given while
the center of the radius R0 + r0 coincides with the center of
the polar coordinate system in the analytical solution for
the blunt V-notch problem in which r0 = ρ( q − 1) q , with
q = (2π − 2α ) π , according to [10].
5. Results
By considering five different values of R0 , ranging from
0.5 to 1.5 mm, and by plotting the computed averaged SED
as a function of R0 , it has been found that assuming R0 =
= 1 mm the specimens having ρ = 0.5 mm, 2α = 30° and
ρ = 2 mm, 2α = 90° experience the same averaged SED
value at failure. This means that at the critical load the speci-
mens are characterized by the same SED value averaged in
a control volume having radius equal to 1 mm, which is
Fig. 6. SED based summary from V-notched PMMA specimens
under compression
independent of the notch shape and sharpness. This value
also corresponds to the critical value that can be obtained
by Eq. (1) using as compressive strength σc =  230 MPa,
according to [28], and E = 2018 MPa. For the herein con-
sidered PMMA the critical SED has been found equal to
13.1 MJ/m3. Figure 6 shows a summary of the experimen-
tal data in terms of the square root value of the SED aver-
aged on the control volume of radius R0 =  1 mm, nor-
malised with respect to the constant value of the critical
SED (13.1 MJ/m3). Indeed, this parameter is proportional
to the fracture load. The aim was to investigate the range of
accuracy of the SED-based fracture assessment for the
PMMA specimens under compression. It has been found
that about all experimental data fit in a narrow scatter band,
whose limits are drawn here with an engineering judge-
ment from 0.75 to 1.25. However, it should be pointed out
that the majority of the results falls inside a band ranging
from 0.8 to 1.1. It can be concluded that the scatter of the
data is quite limited and substantially independent of the
notch geometry and, in the present author opinion, the av-
eraged SED criterion appears suitable for the fracture
strength assessment of V-notched PMMA specimens under
compression.
6. Conclusion
Brittle fracture in V-notched PMMA specimens was
investigated under compression loading both experimen-
tally and numerically. Fracture tests conducted on prismatic
specimens and reported in the recent literature have been
reanalyzed in this paper by means of the averaged strain
energy density criterion. Being the experimental results in
good agreement with the numerical assessments, it has been
shown that the proposed method is suitable for predicting
PMMA brittle failure under compressive loading condition
and in the presence of notches having a different opening
angle and sharpness.
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Ïîñòóïèëà â ðåäàêöèþ
23.01.2017 ã.

Ñâåäåíèÿ îá àâòîðàõ
Ali Reza Torabi, PhD, University of Tehran, Iran, a_torabi@ut.ac.ir
Majid R. Ayatollahi, PhD, Prof., Director, Iran University of Science and Technology, m.ayat@iust.ac.ir
Marco Colussi, PhD student, University of Padova, Italy, colussim@hotmail.com